I looked at the Harley and listened to the quiet of Carnal.

Then I forced out ten more laps (with three more rest periods), got out of the pool, toweled off, grabbed my stuff and ran to my room.

Chapter Two

A Job to Do

I spent more time wondering what to wear to work than I did training at Bubba’s.

Since Krystal was in a tank top the day before, I decided that it probably wasn’t work casual, more like anything goes. So I put on a nice pair of jeans, a belt and a peachy-pink colored t-shirt that had a crew neck and three ruffles made up the sleeves. I thought it was bright and cute. My ex, Brad, told me he thought it was a little young for me but I liked it, I thought it suited my coloring. I wore flip-flops because I usually wore flip-flops if I could but also because I figured I’d need comfortable shoes. I put in some earrings that were little dangles of peachy-pink crystals, a half-inch choker which was a net of peachy-pink beads and a bunch of bracelets that were elasticized bands of multi-colored crystal beads, peach, pink, peachy-pink, creamy peach, creamy pink, clear and I threw in a couple of blue ones to go with my jeans.

I walked from the hotel to Bubba’s thinking that I should have planned ahead last night and maybe stocked some provisions in my room. I left early so I could pop by the bakery to get a donut and a coffee. I hadn’t even thought of dinner the night before and didn’t eat any so I was starving.

My muscles also ached. It was dull but they were not used to being worked. They’d been cooped up in a car for four and a half months for one but even before that it wasn’t like I was a regular at the gym. I didn’t think this was good considering I’d be on my feet all day.

Krystal was there when I got there and I knew right off she was in a bad mood. I didn’t know why but I suspected it was because there were some dirty glasses and beer bottles left out “on the floor” as she called it though most of them were on ledges on the walls around the pool tables and not on the floor at all. Also, when we turned the chairs off the tables, most of them hadn’t been wiped down.

I suspected this was why she was in a bad mood because she muttered irately, “Fuckin’ Tonia and Jonelle. How many times do I gotta tell them? Wipe the tables, clear the floor of empties. Shit,” she looked at me, “you got evening shift, you clear the empties off the floor and wipe down the tables real good. It ain’t hard to do and Anita comes in in the mornin’ to sweep and mop so it ain’t like you’re part cleanin’ lady.”

I nodded, making a mental note to clear the empties and wipe down the tables “real good” because I figured that Krystal was the sort of person who didn’t need a lot to tick her off and I didn’t want to do anything to add to her seemingly perpetual bad mood.

She showed me around the bar but there wasn’t much to it. The front which had the bar, a mess of tables out front and the pool tables to the sides. She explained that day shift there was only one waitress and bartender unless it was a weekend. If it was a weekend, the floor was split into two sections for two waitresses. Weeknights there were always two waitresses and one or two bartenders. Weekend nights there were three waitresses and at least two bartenders.

“We don’t have no busser,” she informed me, leading me out of the bar and down one of the two doorways that led off the back of the bar. It had a sign over it that said “Private Do Not Enter”. “Don’t need another person on payroll when you waitresses can nab your own empties.”

I nodded even though she wasn’t looking at me.

She took me to an office and let us in. “You stow your purse in here and you take your breaks in here. We don’t give keys out to everyone so you need to come back here, you find Tate, Bubba, Dalton or me to let you in.”

“Tate, Bubba and Dalton?” I asked.

“Bubba’s my old man,” she answered. “Tate owns the bar with us. He ain’t around a lot. Then again, Bubba ain’t around a lot either. Like now. He’s fishin’,” she said the word “fishin’” like it tasted bad and she had to get it out of her mouth fast or she’d have that taste forever. “Dalton’s the other bartender,” she finished.

“Oh. Okay,” I said and she eyed me.

“Gonna say this now gonna say it once, Bubba, Tate and me own this place and Bubba’s been in my bed goin’ on a decade. That’s about as much fraternization as we need. Half the time I don’t want that jackass in my bed, half the time he ain’t in my bed because he’s fishin’. You get an eye for Tate or Dalton, and they all get an eye for Tate or Dalton, rethink it. You’re here to work not get laid.”

“Oh,” I repeated, more than a little surprised at this subject matter and the way she presented it. “Okay.”

She didn’t move but she spoke. “Not jokin’, girl.”

“Um…” I decided to give as good as I got in an effort to make her think I wasn’t the fancy pants she clearly thought I was from her comments the day before though, in all honesty, I kind of was or at least I wasn’t a biker babe like her. “I’m not exactly in the market to get laid, Krystal.”

She kept staring at me. Then she moved out of the office muttering, “Yeah, you haven’t seen Tate or Dalton yet.”

I had to admit this worried me a little bit. I didn’t need to be working alongside good-looking men, especially starting out. It’d make me anxious. Once I got used to things, got my bearings, I’d be fine mainly because I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t in the market to get laid. That market had closed and I was okay with that. But I didn’t want to be fumbling around learning how to be a waitress in a biker bar with handsome biker men as my audience.

As if she read my mind, Krystal talked as she led me down the hall. “I’m keepin’ you on day shifts for a week, maybe two, see how you do. Cut your teeth. Get the lay of the land before you go nights.”

“Thanks,” I said when she stopped outside a closed door.

She turned to me. “Don’t thank me. Tips are shit on the day shift.”

She unlocked and pushed open the door and showed me the storeroom. Then she told me that waitresses might be called on to help stock or run back and get something if the bartenders were busy. Then she showed me the clipboard where they kept track of stock in a complicated way that would be far easier if put on a computer spreadsheet. Even though I probably could set that up for her in about an hour, I didn’t inform her of this.